JANE RILES
BIOGRAPHY
Jane Riles was born in the winter of 1939 in St. Joseph, just north of Kansas City, in the SHOW ME state of Missouri. This was a fitting birthplace for an artist who in her maturity would show in her art a openness, an acceptance of all aspects of life and an unbounded exuberance for every facet of life. From her first steps there was plenty of evidence of a deep restlessness and also of an explosive energy. To this day, Jane Riles and Jane Riles's art is, at its heart, unpredictable, intuitive, often whimsical and always wildly beautiful.Her art is always in motion and "on the go".
On her 4th grade report card, the teacher wrote, "Jane is my shining light". Jane's father was a country doctor and a celebrated local surgeon and her mother, a former school teacher. But like Jane, the doctor and his wife had an adventuresome spirit. They had vacationed in Florida when Jane was 8. The warm Florida winters beckoned. In 1952 Dr. Riles bought a medical practice in Fort Lauderdale and, with his wife, Jane and her younger brother, moved to Fort Lauderdale.
In early 1957 Jane entered Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia, because of its emphasis on foreign languages and its proximity to Washington. The capital's cosmopolitan and international character appealed to her. She was interested in a career in the Foreign Service. The study of foreign languages appealed to Jane because it opened up the door to foreign travel and adventure.. For one year Jane lived in the on campus "French House" where only French was spoken. Mary Washington gave Jane a degree in French and a big start as a painter. The noted German-American muralist and illustrator, Emil Schnelock taught at Mary Washington from 1938 to 1958. Jane's creative life was born the day she walked into Schnelock's elective art class in the fall of 1958. Taking this course would require an additional $20 art materials fee. Jane was hesitant at first and wrote her mother in Florida. Her mother said, "Go ahead, Jane" and an artist was born that fall. She learned composition, color and design. The desire to paint infused Jane's personality. Although she majored in French, she took art courses throughout her years at Mary Washington.
Jane returned to Florida in December 1960 at the end of her college program and took a job teaching world geography at a Fort Lauderdale Junior High School.
With her college roommate, the first edition of "Europe on Five Dollars a Day" and the money from teaching, Jane made the "grand" tour of Europe in the summer of 1961. She returned in September with a diary, sketches and the memory of the major works of the Louve, the Prado and other European museums . Next, Jane taught two semesters of French in the high desert community of China Lake, California. After finishing the term at China Lake, Jane married Bill Wamsley in June, 1962, in Chillicothe, Missouri, where her parents had relocated. As the wife of a mining engineer, she knew that she would be living in remote and exotic areas of the world.
In 1965 Bill was given his first overseas assignment as mine superintendent of the world's largest bauxite mine in the very remote Amazon jungle location of Moengo, Suriname (Dutch Guyana). The hot steaming rain forest, the driving rain on her tin roof, the far off sounds at night of native drumming, the screeching and low moans of jungle animals and the constant rumble from the big bauxite crusher just down river combined to energize Jane's imagination and drive her passion to paint. She had brought her oils, canvases and sketch books and for the first time in her life she began to paint with an energy and a devotion that amazed even her.
Her sketches of this period are carefully-crafted line drawings of native huts, of river canoes and of landscapes as if she were trying to bring some sort of artistic order out of the disorder and the wild green life that existed just beyond her front door.
Her Suriname oils, on the other hand, of jaguars and of brooding landscapes just seem to explode off the canvas in a thick richness of reds, oranges and ochre and the movement of sinister shapes.
In the late summer of 1966 Bill and Jane returned to a new job in Peoria, Illinois. Annelise, the first of her two daughters, was born in Peoria that November. The family then moved to Portland, Oregon, where Bill went to work for ESCO, a manufacturer of mining equipment. Marguerite was born in the spring of 1969 in Portland. That summer of 1969 the Wamsleys were transferred to ESCO's Danville, Illinois plant. They lived in Danville for three years from 1969 to 1972.
Danville was close to the University of Illinois and to the vibrant Chicago art scene. Jane painted almost full time, up to 100 canvases a year and she quickly established herself as an artist of repute by winning many awards at art shows and fairs across Illinois and Indiana. In April of 1972 Jane had her first solo show at "The Gallery" in Danville. The night of the reception over 1/3 of her paintings were sold. The impetus for this burst of painting was her continuing art education at the Graduate School of Art, University of Illinois, Urbana and the Peoria Art School in Peoria. During this time she studied with many of the major Chicago School and Illinois artists including Nicola Ziroli, Glen Bradshaw, Jerome Savage and George Foster. Ziroli, an Italian-American artist of the Chicago School with a national reputation for his landscapes and figure painting, was Jane's great influence. Ziroli taught Jane an appreciation for the aesthetics of painting. During this period Jane also taught oil painting at the Danville Community College. By 1972, Jane was well respected by her peers and by art critics. She was well on her way to becoming a major figure in Midwest art. But this was not to be.
In 1972 Bill was asked to head ESCO's European Division and the family moved to Lyon, France. The Wamsleys lived in a flat in the center of the city, but also purchased a small country farmhouse in the mountains that in time they restored. They travelled frequently to the company sites in Africa, the Middle East and, of course, all over Europe. She painted in oils and sketched on all of these trips. Jane established her own art studio in Lyon.
Her paintings were exhibited all over the Lyon area including the prestigious SALON 75 of the Societe Lyonnaise des Beaux Arts in April of 1975 and also at the SALON D'AUTOMNE a year later. During this period Jane had 3 one person shows: at the U.S. Consulate, at L'Institut de Pasteur and at the Hotel Sofitel. As in Suriname and in Illinois, in Lyon the center of Jane's life, after her two girls, was her art.
In 1979 the Wamsley's left France, going home around the world, visiting Turkey, Iran, India, Hong Kong, and Japan before reaching Portland, Oregon, the headquarters of ESCO. On arrival in Portland, Jane immediately began art courses at the Pacific Northwest College of Art and for the first time she began to paint in acrylics. This new medium freed her stylistically to be a lot more spontaneous.
The return to Portland also coincided with some new career directions.The energy and the passion that she had for so long devoted to her art she now directed toward teaching French on the secondary level and getting a Ph.D in French literature from the University of Oregon. Working for a cooperative of all public Oregon universities, from 1984 to 1987 Jane directed the "Oregon Center For French Studies Abroad" a program based in the old university town of Poitiers, France. She sketched alot but painted infrequently during these busy years in France. However, her impressions of France and her memories of faces and friendships became the raw materials of her art when she did begin to paint later. Jane was 47 when she returned the the United States, a supportive mother to her own two "shining lights", her daughters, now both in college. For a year Jane lived in New York City where she directed a student international exchange program. But the call back to the Middle West was strong and she accepted a treaching job in Kansas.
From 1988 to 1995 Jane taught French first at Wichita State University and then at Kansas State University. Jane directed Wichita State's "Summer Abroad Program" based in Strasbourg, France. Later, living in Manhattan, Kansas, Jane created, produced and starred in a daily interactive French language television program whose signal was sent to classrooms of rural high schools (without French teachers) throughout the United States. The program's format was entertaining, funny and highly creative. It was a sort of "Mister Roger's Neighborhood" in French aimed at the adolescent language student.
In 1994 Jane moved into a house on the rim of a canyon over looking the city of San Diego. For two years she renovated the inside and outside, established a French style garden and arranged an art studio. The house is reminiscent of cottages in the south of France.
In 1995 a publisher of learning CD's in Seattle, after seeing tapes of Jane's Manhattan TV shows, hired Jane to create and star in the language video, "French To Go".
It was a great success. During this time Jane also taught French in San Diego, but her great desire was to start painting again. Again she found herself at a crossroads. She could continue as a French teacher. She could teach full time on the college level. Or she could cut those career ties forever and strike out on her own as a full time artist. She chose the latter. She recalled the emotions and the rewards of her budding art career in Danville, Illinois, 30 years before and how that success had ended with the move to Lyon. Her life had been a series of moves and new beginnings. Now, she resolved to stay the course!
Just after her move to San Diego, her oldest daughter, Annelise, now a law professor, gave Jane the tuition at the Athenaeum School of the Arts in nearby La Jolla as a birthday gift.. She took these courses and more and in early 1998 she burst on the San Diego art scene like a storm just as she had in Illinois in 1969. On the strength of her artwork, she was accepted into the San Diego Museum of Art Artists Guild. She joined the San Diego Art Institute, the La Jolla Art Association and the San Diego Watercolor Society and her paintings were accepted for nearly every show. In May of 1998 she won First Place in the Spring Show of the San Diego Watercolor Society; in June of 1999, an Honorable Mention in the same group; a Best In Show at the Fall Awards Show of the Watercolor Society in 1999; a month later the First Place in the Watercolor Society, and the Juror's Choice Award at the San Diego Institute of Art in 2000.
In October of 1999 Jane traveled to remote Bangladesh and this trip resulted in 12 large arcylic paintings that were exhibited at the La Jolla Art Association Gallery in February 2000.
Her paintings and many ink sketches from that trip illustrate a guide to Bangladesh published in late 2000.
Jane is currently painting about 200 arcylics and watercolors a year. Many of these original pieces are also available as limited edition prints. Her clients, like her experiences, are worldwide. Although she resides in San Diego, she is generally in France, or anywhere else in the world. About 3 months of the year. Jane make regular one month teaching trips to the south of France or to the Dordogne area every September. She takes six to a dozen art students. When not travelling in the local area, she conducts daily art classes in a rented villa or a chateau. In September 2003 and in 2004 with Atlanta artist, Cathy Ehrler, she conducted three weeks of painting workshops in the small village of Coulaures, Dordogne, in a 600 year old chateau. Another workshop is planned in another location for September or May 2006. Click here for full details of past workshops.
Jane's first major one person show in the U.S. opened at the San Diego Art Institute on 12 December 2002- a one month solo show - CITY REFLECTIONS. Here are some images from the opening night reception.
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The show ran through 12 January 2003.
Late in 2003 and into 2004 Jane began a series of exciting abstracts. These new paintings have been on exhibit in many shows in the last year, including the San Diego Art Walk in April 2004 amd 2005; two shows at the San Diego Art Institute, and two shows at the San Diego Water Color Society. Her abstract floral, LE BOUQUET, won the first place, Best in Show, in the July San Diego Water Color Society show.
LE BOUQUET
Jane was 3 months of the summer 2005 in Cannes and in Paris. At present she is in a group show in a Cannes gallery. Some of her paintings from the summer of 2005 in Cannes
can be found by CLICKING HERE.
In the summer of 2006, Jane conducted another exciting artwork shop in Cannes in the south of France and in the summer of 2007 she held a two week workshop for the first time ever in Paris and then later in Cannes.
For the first time in a decade Jane will not hold a workshop in France in the summer of 2008 but instead she will show at many of the summer San Diego art fairs and she will be teaching painting to groups in her San Diego studio and home. For more details on Jane's 2008 art workshops in San Diego CLICK HERE
Jane Riles is an uncommon American phenomenon. She was born a child of the great plains, raised on the Atlantic's edge, educated in proper Virginia, but then sent out into the Amazon jungle, then settled in civilized France, back to the great plains and finally another ocean's edge, the Pacific. Jane's senses have been on overdrive for 60 years. She is indeed her teacher's "shining light" and her light still shines as she continues to create works of art that inspire and energize us all.
(contact the artist directly at janeriles@aol.com or visit her w eb site by clicking here.